


What Keeps Us Alive

by ungoodpirate



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Pai Sho, Pai Sho metaphors, Pre-Season/Series 01, in the way that i wrote this that it could've happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24815326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: "What did you say to someone you hadn’t seen in three years? That on most days you had the weight of the ocean, a banishment, the war, and childhood memories between you? What did you say to someone you might not see again tomorrow? That you might not see ever again?"###Shortly before the boy in the iceberg would immerge, setting off the events of Book 1, Zuko and Mai happen to cross paths in an Earth Kingdom port while Mai's family is touring the colonies. They have a single night and the morning after to get over the awkwardness and figure out if they still fit, even if this is the last time they ever see each other.In which Zuko is an awkward turtleduck who is also angry, Iroh meddles in his nephew's love life, and Mai learns how to stand up for something.
Relationships: Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 174





	What Keeps Us Alive

The Earth Kingdom was boring. Drab. Dreadful. And everything was the color of dirt. Mai sighed and propped up her chin in her hand as she leaned against the edge of the porthole, looking out.

She felt more stable leaning against a wall than standing inside their cabin. The floor kept swaying with the waves lapping against the sides of the boat. It wasn’t so noticeable when they were moving, but they had been docked in the port for over twelve hours and at the mercy of the slowly rocking current. 

Apparently the ship needed repairs. Mai thought it would be better off to just let it sink. 

“Governor Riku will receive us in his manor once we arrive,” Mother said as she fussed with some local flora, trying to arrange it into a suitable centerpiece for a family of their standing, even if there was no one around but the family to see it. “He has a daughter a few years your junior who has never even been to the FIre Nation.” 

“How horrible,” Mai said, voice flat, in the slice of an opening her mother had left for her to speak. 

Mother plucked a wilted wildflower from the arrangement. “I don’t know how the Governor expects to instill proper national pride in a child who has even visited her country. He should’ve sent her back for a few years at the Royal Fire Academy at least.” 

Mai hummed something noncommittal. When Mother got like this she really only needed the suggestion that Mai was listening. After all, that was what Mai was supposed to do: listen, emotionless and opinionless, unless it was the same opinion as a person of higher social standing you were trying to impress. 

“I expect you to make nice with her. And demonstrate what a properly raised daughter of the Fire Nation acts like.” 

Outside, on the dry, solid, unrocking land that Mai was envious of, she watched a half dozen men haul up a pair of posts upright, a green banner between them. In fact, there was a lot of green flapped around the port town’s roofs. 

“What're you looking at?” Mother leaned down beside Mai to peer out the porthole. “I can’t believe they allow these people to still have their own base festivals.”

Mai barely lifted her chin from her hand to mutter, “It’s a neutral port.” 

Mother huffed like she was offended that a thing like that even existed and her boat was forced to be docked at one. 

While the whole port stank of fish and coal smoke, Mai -- who hadn’t been to go anywhere in the Earth Kingdom thus far without an escort -- couldn’t help but thinking that a festival might be less boring than her current occupation, even if the entire thing was the color of dirt. 

#

The approaching coastline pierced the horizon with a jagged outline of rocks and buildings.

“We’re stopping for supplies only,” Prince Zuko barked from the center of the deck. “We’ll be shipping out again by nightfall.”

A low mumble of grumbling discontent from the crew made itself known over the sound of the lapping waves. Not quite loud enough, distinct enough, or insubordinate enough for Zuko to deliver a scolding, but it made him scowl anyway. 

He turned to watch their ship’s approach from the tip of the bow, eyes forward. Always looking forward. 

Zuko heard his uncle’s slow, decisive footsteps approaching and stopping just behind Zuko’s shoulder. 

“Prince Zuko,” he said in a low tone that wouldn’t be heard over the engines except for the two of them. “Consider perhaps giving your crew a night off in the port. It’s been weeks since we’ve been on land. Even the sturdiest of sailors get homesick for it.” 

“There isn’t time for nights off, Uncle.” Zuko had a lead down the coast in the Chin province. A merchant with a rare Airbender Monk relic who would be traveling inland by the next full moon. 

“You’d be surprised how much harder men will work when they have a chance to rest every once and awhile.” 

Anger flaring, Zuko spun around and shouted, “They should work hard because I command it!” 

It was never truly silent at sea. Not with the wind and waves, with the gulls and the steady work on and under deck, with the ever churning innards of the ship. But there was a sort of silence -- a people’s silence -- as those crew still on deck froze to gawk and judge. 

With a huff, Zuko marched across the deck, past his Uncle and the gawkers, grunting a “get out of my way” to an inconveniently placed crewman. He escaped to the privacy of his cabin. He had plans to make. Maps to examine. Prince Zuko didn’t have time for nights off. 

#

If there was one thing Mai’s surprise of a little brother was good for it was taking some of her mother’s oppressive attention off of her. So while Mother was distracted by Tom-Tom's fussiness from teething it allowed Mai to lock herself in her private cabin off their family’s main suite with the excuse that she needed to “handle some correspondence.” Mother liked the sound of this and would leave Mai undisturbed because she liked when Mai wrote to her politically advantageous acquaintances, number one of which was Princess Azula. 

And if the porthole in Mai’s cabin was big enough to sneak out of, wasn’t it just begging to be snuck out of? 

Usually, when Mai used this trick, it was so she could sneak to a part of the deck behind the helm where people rarely went to practice her knife throwing. 

It wasn’t something her parents forbad, not since Princess Azula had it in fashion for even the noble class of women in the Fire Nation to train in some form of combative arts, but it wasn’t something they understood. Or remembered to arrange a space for her to practice. 

This time, however, Mai didn’t sneak to her secret spot. She snuck off the ship and into town. 

The marketplace of the port town was really below her. Running children tread on the hem of her robes without a bother, merchants shouted from booths and doorways for her attention to sell cheap clay jewelry and pottery, and the fish smell was only barely pushed out by vendors frying and seasoning foods in ways that were appealing if foriegn. 

It was late afternoon, the sun glaring bright on its downward slant, and the festivities hadn’t quite started yet. But something was about to. 

Lured down a side road by sight of a smithie with a display of blades with a sign that boasted they were the sharpest in the region, a voice reached her ears. 

“I don’t care if they say they’re sold out for some peasant festival. Fill the stores, or you’ll be rationing for a month!” 

It was just a snippet, one sentence cut out from all the rest of the conversation-filled crowd, but Mai recognized it. The voice had been lower, but not different. 

“Hey! You got to pay for that,” startled the smithie. Mai had been drifting away from the table with a blade she’d been inspecting without even noticing. Mai stabbed it back into the wood table, said “It’s not even that sharp,” and left. 

She weaved through the crowd, stopping when her eyes landed on a set of Fire Nation red armor and peak of familiar profile. 

For a second, she couldn’t breath. 

The next second she could. “Zuko.” 

#

It was an odd thing for Zuko to hear his name unadorned. To his crew, he was ‘Sir’ and a title. Even his Uncle, for the last three years, had almost exclusively referred to him as ‘ _ Prince _ Zuko’ as they lived on the ship. 

‘Zuko’ by itself was a name reserved for his family -- mother, father, sister -- and a few close friends. But he didn’t have those anyway. ‘Zuko’ was a childhood memory. Another thing left behind him in his banished home. 

He whipped around with curiosity mixed with anger. Everything he did now was mixed with anger. Who  _ dared _ . But also…  _ who _ dared. 

Then he saw her. She was different and the same. A good deal taller, her hair still silky black, dressed in the fashion of the Fire Nation, and impossibly there, in a random port along the coast of the Earth Kingdom.

“What’re you doing here?” he said, sharp and demanding. It wasn’t how he meant it. He just didn’t know how to be soft anymore. 

She crossed her arms. “It’s good to see you too.” 

“I mean…” He fumbled for words. “How are you here?” 

Maybe she wasn’t here at all. Maybe Zuko had finally run into one of those spirits Uncle was always talking about, and it had just taken her form. More likely, he had some bad food and was hallucinating. 

She walked closer with a grace that was more warrior than spirit. 

“My family’s taking a tour of the colonies. Father’s supposed to report his findings back to the capital. Really he’s vying for an important governorship and looking for weak links.” She stopped in front of him. “It’s been boring.” 

“Boring,” Zuko echoed. He wouldn’t know if he’d called sailing across the seas and scouring foriegn lands for information as boring. More frustrating and shameful. But he supposed finding a weak colonial leader was easier than finding the Avatar. 

“Well,” she raised her eyebrows just a fraction. “It’s suddenly gotten less boring.” 

His heart thudded. 

“Oh, Prince Zuko,” interrupted Uncle Iroh in his bombastic way. “I found the most delightful little tea stall…” 

Zuko jerked out of the stunned haze he had been hanging in since Mai’s spirit-like appearance. Mai blinked. Iroh trailed off, his gaze going a little shrewd as he looked between the pair of them. 

“General Iroh,” Mai said in greeting with a little bow. 

“Lady Mai. You’ve certainly grown up. And I’m not a General anymore. I’m just an old man.” 

It might seem strange to some that the esteemed Dragon of the West knew the names of his nephew’s childhood friends, but those who knew him better wouldn’t find it strange at all that he was the type of person who cared to learn the names of children. 

“Uncle,” Zuko said in scolding, but he wasn’t sure what to follow it up with. All he could think he had meant to say was ‘Uncle, don’t embarrass me’ but he was certainly not going to say that outloud. 

Zuko half scold didn’t stop Iroh. It never did. 

“How fortuitous of an encounter. Shall I inform the crew, Prince Zuko, that we will not be shipping off on schedule?” 

“My family’s staying in port until our ship repairs are done,” Mai volunteered. “For the night at least.” 

Zuko said, “Tell the crew they have the night off.” 

#

“The night off?” Lt. Jee repeated, voicing the astonment of the whole crew. Prince Zuko, they had all learned long ago, didn’t easily change his stubborn mind. 

“We might be in port longer than expected,” Iroh said. “Prince Zuko ran into a lady friend in the market.” 

“A… lady friend?” 

This was, somehow, even more impossible to believe. 

“Someone he’s known since childhood.” Iroh stroked his beard, staring off to where the sun was beginning to dip into the sea. “I think this will be a salve to his spirit. He’s been away from home for a long time.” 

Jee wasn’t so sure of this. He’d been in the military, been on the sea, for a long time. He knew for some that reminders of home left behind was what kept them going. But for others the reminders of what they were missing haunted like a cursed spirit and drove them sick with despair. 

But it wasn’t Jee’s job to argue with the esteemed General or worry about the state of the Prince’s soul. It was his job to manage the Prince’s temperament and take care of the men. 

“Alright, you heard him, crew. Get out of here and enjoy that festival.” 

#

Zuko stumbled his way through requesting to escort her around the market like a student badly remembering his etiquette classes. Mai remembered when Zuko had been a student who badly remembered his etiquette classes. He had always been too earnest and impulsive to manage manners even if he had been the kinder of the two royal siblings as they grew up. And who did he need manners for? As a prince, most people mannered up to him. 

It almost would’ve been charming in a reminiscent sort of way if they hadn’t been well beyond stilted etiquette back when they were thirteen.

Mai let him wait a little bit, uncomfortable, before replying, “If you insist.” 

They walked side by side through the streets, slowly filling with more people and more noise. They didn’t touch. They didn’t talk. 

What did you say to someone you hadn’t seen in three years? That on most days you had the weight of the ocean, a banishment, the war, and childhood memories between you? What did you say to someone you might not see again tomorrow? That you might not see ever again? 

And in that predicament, did you talk about the future or the past?

“Ty Lee ran off and joined the circus,” Mai said, piercing the silence. 

“Are you serious?” 

“You don’t believe it?” 

Zuko scoffed in a way that might’ve generously been interrupted as a laugh. “I actually can.” 

Mai stopped in front of a canopied booth where a kettle whistled over an open flame, the smells of jasmine, ginseng, and mint filling the steamy air. “This must be your uncle’s tea stall.” 

“You want some?” he asked with less etiquette. 

She agreed without torturing him this time. 

Seated at the stall and served, the overbearing tea merchant dismissed a completely etiquette-less Zuko, they had been turned silent again.

Mai blew over her cup of tea, searching for another tidbit from home. “I have a little brother now.” 

Zuko’s mouth soured. 

“He’s just a baby, obviously. He’s well, what you’d expect from a baby.” She slipped her tea; it scolded her tongue. 

“Has it really been long enough for that?” 

Had it really been long enough for a child no one had even dreamed of to be conceived, carried, born, and then grown at least enough to be hardy enough for cross-sea travels? 

“A lot can change in three years.” A lesser woman would’ve had to set down her tea lest she revealed her hands to be shaking. Mai had a knife-thrower’s hands. They didn’t shake.

She set down her cup.

Zuko’s tea was bubbling in the tight clench of his hands. Mai took the cup from his fingers, let the ceramic clatter on the counter, spill over, for the want to save her own fingertips from scalding. 

Then she grabbed him by the wrist. “This tea’s horrendous. Let’s go.” She dragged Zuko away, ignoring the indignant squawking of the tea brewer behind them. 

#

Her grip on his wasn’t exactly gentle, but it wasn’t cruel. It was something Zuko could’ve broken easily free from if he had wanted. He didn’t want to. 

What Zuko wanted to do as Mai dragged him across the market streets was twist his hand around in her grip, bringing their palms together. Like they used to do sitting by the turtleduck pond when he was twelve, but only when Azula busy off somewhere else for them to have enough time for him to work up the bravery to reach out. 

He didn’t twist his hand now not because he wasn’t brave enough, because he knew what Mai deserved and he knew what he didn’t. 

“Where’re you taking me?” 

Mai stopped. Her fingers loosened on his wrist, then dropped away entirely. He curled that hand into a fist. 

“I don’t know. But if I’m only in town one night I want to do something more interesting than sitting around and drinking tea like a little old lady.” 

“Don’t say that around my uncle. He likes to sit around and drink tea like a…” 

“Not-so-little old man?”

Zuko couldn’t fight the grin. He hadn’t much of an occasion to practice fighting the more positive side of emotions; he just hadn’t had them. “Actually, you should say it around my uncle. He’d find it funny.” 

The corner of her lips twitched and suddenly all this uncertain mess of an encounter seemed a lot easier. There weren’t two out of place, teenage, Fire Nation nobles in an Earth Kingdom port town trying to figure out how they refit into each other’s lives. They were instead Mai and Zuko without complications. 

The moment was short-lived as Zuko found many of his moments of rare peace were short-lived, for the vendor had been calling over the crowds to lure festival-goers to a game of darts in exchange for children’s stuffed toys turned his exacting attention onto the prince. 

“You there! Strapping young man. Win a prize for your girlfriend?” 

Both hands fisted. “She’s not my girlfriend!” 

Zuko failed to notice a few nearby festival-goers side-eying his anger-hunched shoulders. If he had noticed, he wouldn’t have cared. 

“I’ll play for myself,” Mai said, brushing past Zuko. To other’s her tone may have sounded completely flat, but Zuko heard the sharpened edge. 

“For a pretty lady, the first round is free.” The vendor stroked his little goatee; Zuko ached to punch him in the face. “The game is darts. Every bull’s eye gets a prize. The more bull’s eyes, the better the prize.” He scattered five cheap darts on the counter edge before Mai. Mai eyed the line of five dart boards down the back of the booth. Then, in the length of two blinks, shot all five darts, landing each one in dead center bull’s eye down each target. 

The vendor’s mouth dropped. A few watching children cheered. 

Mai tilted her head. “What does that get me?” 

Still fish-gaping, the vendor stumbled out, “Well -- that was a free… practice round. Not a prize-winning round.”

“You didn’t say that,” Mai said with a slice of a glare as Zuko marched up and grabbed the vendor up the front of his tunic. 

“Give the lady her prize.” 

Zuko didn’t know if it was the scar, the glower, or the Fire Nation armor that made the vendor understand the threatening reality of Zuko meaning business, but he gulped and said much more high-pitched, “Of course. Right away.” 

That was how Mai ended up with a life-sized, stuffed koala-sheep too big for her even to wrap her arms around. 

“What am I supposed to do with this thing?” she said in a wonder tone of disgust, nose wrinkled. 

“I could set it on fire?” Zuko volunteered. 

“Now that’s an idea.” 

#

They found a spot on the rocky shoreline, off path from the filled docks and the busy streets to burn the koala-sheep as an effigy. It burned like a campfire, lighting up a little halo for them to stand in against the not surrounding evening dark. 

“Which was better… the look on his face when I hit all the targets or the look on his face when you threatened him?” 

“The first one. You always surprise people… People always find me scary.” 

The firelight flared brighter putting all the angles and lines of Zuko’s face in sharp contrast.

“I don’t find you scary.” 

Zuko turned his head, disguising his scar in the night shadows. “Even now?” 

“I’m not easily scared.” Mai crossed her arms across her front, shoulders hunching in.

“Are you cold?” Zuko asked, the campfire already growing as he willed it to. 

Mai shook her head, but said, “I’ve been cold since I left the Fire Nation.” 

“You get used to it.” 

Mai squeezed her eyes shut, the light of the campfire still a smudge behind her eyelids. “When you left, no one would tell me anything about what happened. Where you were. If you were alright. I just heard rumors and… Azula’s stories.”

“... No one told you?”   
  


“I wasn’t important enough to tell.” She opened her eyes. With the scarred side of his face cast in shadow, he didn’t look so different as he had three years ago. She didn’t mind looking at the scar as a tangible thing, but she didn’t like it as a reminder of all the things that had changed. “Just like I’m not important enough for my parents to realize I’ve been missing for five hours.” 

“It hasn’t been five hours. It’s barely been three.” 

Had the spirits created time bending? For how was it possible for these past three hours to feel longer than the last three years. 

She unwoven her wrapped arms and planted her palms to either side of Zuko’s shoulder’s. The cold armor made the touch much more distant than it would’ve been if he’d been wearing robes, but it was still less distant than yesterday, and the day before, and all that. 

“Did you miss me?” she asked. 

“I missed a lot of things.”

“But did you miss… me?” 

He reached up and laid one hand over hers. His touch was warm in a way that only firebenders were. 

“Yes,” he breathed. 

She leaned in. He leaned back, turning his head away. Something ice-like pierced Mai through the gut. 

He removed her hands from his shoulders. “I don’t need your pity.” 

“If you think I was trying to kiss you out of pity, you’re more stupid than I thought.” Mai turned and walked off into the dark. 

For most of the Fire Nation, the firebenders especially, anger was associated with heat, flame, lightning strikes. For Mai, her rage was something opposite. Stone cold and glacial. Frozen and solid. A state where she could be untouchable. 

“Mai! Wait!” A hand landed on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. But she stopped. 

Zuko said nothing for a long moment. Mai tucked her chin to her shoulder to peer over it. 

“I stopped. Aren’t you supposed to start apologizing now, or something?”   
  


“Can you… turn around? Please.” 

She turned and planted herself like a boulder. Emotionless. Unmoveable. It was easier to bear it that way. 

“When I capture the Avatar,” Zuko said, “And my father restores my honor and rightful place in Fire Nation, then I… Then we can --” 

Mai grabbed his face and kissed him because it was a better impulse than the one that made her feel like crying. He didn’t lean away this time. 

#

The morning after the festival, the town looked ravaged. Spilled food and lost things were trodden into the dirt paths. Pennant flags were half taken down. Booths and stands and storefronts that had been lively and stocked were picked over and peopleless. And the few people there were up already shuffled quiet, slow, and dark-eyed. 

“Met me tomorrow,” Zuko had asked in last night’s shadows when he was more a voice she could hear than a thing she could touch. 

She had promised with a hand to his cheek. 

Morning, they had decided, at the tea stall, as soon as she could get away from her parents. 

When Mai rounded the street corner her eyes landed on him waiting for her not more than a few feet away. He noticed her in the same second, a flush rising on his cheeks. It was too much. Mai felt herself flushing too. 

It had been easier last night, parting after the kiss, after holding each other, after admitting all the things that actions inherently admitted. In the dark, all those had felt private. Secret. Safe. 

But in the stark morning light, those things were all exposed. Those things they shared last night had made them vulnerable. They had laid bare what they had wanted too much. What was at risk of being taken away. And to the person who could make it hurt the worst. 

“Mai,” he said as she approached, her name turned into a greeting all by itself. He didn’t say her name like it was a chip of ice, like a komodo-rhino being summoned, or even like it was fact. He said it like it was dawn, the morning sun itself. 

“Zuko,” she said like she was pleased. Because she was pleased. 

They took seats at the tea stall. The brewer glowered at them in a very ineffective way for two people who had grown up around Azula. “I thought my tea was no good.” 

“We’re giving you a chance to redeem yourself,” Mai said dryly, not even bothering to look up to acknowledge him. 

Tea was served and sipped with eye contact avoided. And eyes catching briefly only to dart apart fast, living in an illusion where they had time to be tentative and coy. Instead of in reality where their time was over. 

Mai set down her empty cup with a long sigh. 

“What’s that about?” Zuko asked. 

Mai lifted her gaze and challenged herself not to look away.

“Our ship’s repairs are finished. We’re leaving. This afternoon. At high tide.” 

There. She had just stamped the ending, like a seal in wax. 

“Which way are you’re traveling?”

“North, to the colonies. You?”

Like it was another sentence sent down by the Fire Lord, Zuko said, “South.” 

Another end. 

It had always been unlikely that this chance meeting would be replicated in another port, but now it was certain. Here was the place the axis of their lives crossed and after this they would just be moving farther in opposite directions. 

“We could write.” Even his eye forced into a glare by the scarring looked wide and hopeful. 

“You know we can’t.”

Because being banished not only meant being banished from your homeland, but from your people. 

They could try, like Mai was trying now, in sneaks and secrets, but someone would find out. Mai would be lucky if it was just her parents who found out; they’d just try to stop her and cover it up. But if it was a political rival? Azula? The Fire Lord? Then there would be consequences and Mai had a sense they would be worse for Zuko. The consequences were always worse for Zuko. 

The table shook as Zuko slammed down his cup. “Why did you kiss me last night if you weren’t going to fight for this!” He climbed with a stomp to his feet. “I’ve fought everything in my life, every step of the way while you just sit there and let things happen.”

Mai rose to her feet, slowly. As steady and as cold as a glacier, she said through her teeth, “You don’t get to yell at me.” 

She meant ‘you’ the one person was supposed to like her without trying to force her into the shape of something she wasn’t. 

What he probably heard was ‘you’ the dishonorable, banished prince without a home or throne. 

“Fine.” His body was coiled tight like a snake before the strike and there was something Azula-vicious in his tone. “I’m done wasting my time. Goodbye, Mai.” 

He stormed off. 

Only after he was long around the corner, after she had tossed coins on the table, after she had turned away from gawking tea brewer, did she let the glacier melt. 

#

Mai didn’t know what her face looked like, but the few people who were in the morning streets kept getting out of her way. 

Her way was nothing more than a storming march with no destination. She felt too much to sit still and returning to her ship meant staying there. The final wax seal. In the daytime, her parents had to have noticed her absence by now. 

Consumed in this mental whirlwind, she didn’t notice General Iroh until he had swooped in to walk beside her, matching her gait despite his shorter legs. “Lady Mai! How wonderful to see you once more before we ship off. What do you think of this morning we’re having?” 

“Dreadful.” 

“Ah… yes, those clouds in the east do threaten rain. But rain does not necessarily make for a dreadful day.” 

Mai stopped walking and Iroh stopped a step later. 

“Is there something I can help you with, General Iroh?” 

“I told you. I’m no longer a general.”

Mai smirked. “I wasn’t going to call you an old man to your face.” 

Iroh let out a full-bodied laugh. 

“Now that you’ve mentioned it… I would appreciate it greatly if you’d join me for a game of Pai Sho.”

“Pai Sho?”

“My favorite game, but I’m afraid all my shipmates are growing tired of playing me. A new opponent is always refreshing.”

“I’m not any good.” 

“I’m sure that’s not true.” 

And that’s how Mai ended up sitting in an oddities shop with the Dragon of the West at a Pai Sho table, stretching her memory for how the tiles were supposed to be laid out in their starting positions. 

“Ladies first,” the General Iroh said once the tiles were set. Mai slid a dragon tile far to the left. 

Iroh stroked his beard. “A flanking strategy. Interesting.” He slid a tile of his own just a single spot forward. 

Mai slid a second dragon to accompany her first. 

“Many young players charge straight down the middle.” Iroh slid a second tile behind his first. “But you are clearly a player that is biding your time.” 

If Azula had said this it would’ve been intended as a layered insult. Perhaps that she was too indirect, too passive. Perhaps that her strategy was so obvious that Azula had pinged it already. That Mai was a lot more see through than she thought she was. 

But this was General Iroh, the man who volunteered to travel alongside his banished nephew. He had always come across as more genial than the others in his blood family, but not for a second did Mai consider him less complicated. 

“The dragon tile, though, is an aggressive piece. I prefer the white lotus.” 

“The weakest tile on the board?” 

“No piece on the board is weak,” said Iroh as he moved the white lotus. “It’s all a matter of how you play them.” 

Mai shot a piece forward to block the path he was building. Iroh then skipped his white lotus tile through her, getting back behind her flanking dragons. Not good. Now her flank was flanked. 

“I told you I wasn’t good.” 

“Nonsense. Being good isn’t about a perfect strategy. It’s about figuring your way out when things go wrong.”

Seagulls culled somewhere distantly overhead as Mai moved her discerning gaze from the board to Iroh. She had just thought to herself that she believed him complicated. 

“Have you seen Zuko this morning?” she asked. She moved a piece at random to not make it look like the answer was consuming all her thoughts. 

“My nephew was so consumed with yelling at the crew he didn’t even notice me leave the ship.” 

He made a move. 

Mai laid her hands in her lap. What she wanted to ask next there was no way of answering in riddles. 

“Does Zuko really believe that he’s going to find the Avatar?” The one who had been missing for a hundred years. 

“Prince Zuko has an amazing capability for hope.” 

Mai scoffed. 

“Don’t be so cynical! I’ve seen hope hold together armies. Win battles. Hope can keep a man alive.”

Mai reached out and flipped her flipped her white lotus tile, the game gesture of forfeit. Weakest or strongest, if all that matters was what you did with it… Mai didn't play games she knew she was going to lose. 

“I have to return to my ship, General. My parents are waiting.” 

#

“Mai, where have you been?” demanded her mother upon Mai’s ice storm into their cabin. 

“In the crow’s nest, crying of homesickness. Wondering why you and dad ever dragged us to this spirit’s forsaken wasteland. If Fire Nation is supposed to be the greatest civilization in history, why did we ever bother invading the Earth Kingdom? We should’ve just stayed home and stayed to ourselves.” 

“Mai!” Mother searched for proper words of a reprimand, but was too shocked to have them on the tip of her tongue or the top of her brain. Mai had shocked herself as well. When was the last time she emoted in such a long paragraph? 

“I -- I know we all miss the comforts of home, but I expect you not to talk this way in front of Governor Riku.”

“Of course not.” Before Mai could retreat to her room and slam the door too, a weight tugged at her robes. Mai looked down. It was Tom-Tom, small hands grabbing at her clothes, using her as support. 

“He walked,” Mother said, fond. “He walked to you.” 

Mai couldn’t move. If she did she would knock him over. She had never spent much time or attention for the kid, let alone affection. Yet here he had waddled over to her, his big sister, just because she was who she was, not because she was bending herself into being something else. 

Before Mai could scoop him up, Mother did, cradling him to her shoulder and cooing about his brave little first steps. There was no way she could’ve known Mai was going to pick him up. Had she really ever? If mother needed a break, there was always the nanny -- perfectly hidden out of sight -- that could be summoned without ever having to raise one’s voice. 

But it still felt like something ripped away from her. Why was everything she wanted, as little and rare as it was, ripped away from her? 

“Where are you going?” Mother asked, words hitting Mai’s ears as she was already walking out of theri cabin. “We’ve leaving soon.” And Mother always said it was too busy for them to be on deck during their cast off.

Mai could lie but she didn’t have the time to make a convincing one up. “I’m going to see a banished prince.”

#

It was easy to find Zuko’s ship by following the smudge of coal smoke in the sky, but it was inching already away from the dock as she ran up to it. She spied Zuko the deck amongst the scurrying crew. Over the wind, she could hear the hint of him yelling something, but not words. She tried yelling for his attention, anyone’s, but wasn’t noticed. 

Mai grit her teeth. She would be noticed. 

She felt the shuriken between her fingers before she even realized she moved. Aim was easy. The distance would be a little trickier. And if a crewman accidentally walked into the blade’s path after she threw it… well, she’d definitely get attention then. 

Mai let the shuriken fly. 

#

“We’re working the engines full speed as soon as we’re in open waters, and all the way through nightfall.” 

“Patience, Prince Zuko, the crew is still recovering from last night’s enjoyments.” 

“That’s not my problem.” 

If uncle Iroh was about to provide another proverb, it was cut off by a blade whizzing through the air and sticking into the deck at Zuko’s feet. 

“How interesting,” Iroh observed as if this were a very curious oddity. But Zuko knew what it was. He ducked to pull the shuriken from the deck. “Mai.” 

He stood and spotted her standing the dock, red and black. 

“Sir, the engines are ready,” said a crewman coming up on his left. 

“Halt the ship.”

“...Excuse me?” 

“I said, halt the ship!” 

But halting was too slow. Turning around and changing direction would be even slower even though the gap between them wasn’t that big yet. Not like it would be. He had a small utility boat lowered into the water, with him in it.

#

“Is that the lady friend?” asked the Cook, leaning far against the railing and squinting. 

“Yes,” said the Helmsman. “I saw them in town last night.”

“What she like?”

“Kinda scary.”

A snort. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.” 

“Now, now,” said General Iroh, approaching the rail and their conversation. “It’s not the place of old men to snoop in young love.” 

#

Zuko climbed onto the dock. Mai had stood as stoic as a statue during his entire approach. 

“Mai,” he said, and it was almost soft. 

He had been angry at her earlier. He had been angry at himself more. For being foolish enough to get distracted from his purpose. For wanting Mai now when he couldn’t have her, didn’t deserve her. Not until he had his honor back. 

“Zuko.” She stepped close. He reached up and touched the side of his face, fingertips laying light right on the edge of the scarring.

He shut his eyes and opened them again.

“I’ll wait for you,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you. To find the Avatar. To come home.” She dropped her hand from his face, and he caught it on the way down. 

Mai checked over her shoulder. “I have to go. They have to be out looking for me by now.” 

“Will you be okay?” 

“I’m scarier than my parents.”

“You are.” He squeezed her fingers then let them go. “This is yours.” He held out the shuriken. 

“Keep it. Something to remember me by.” 

Zuko curled his fingers around the blade.

#

“I thought you were smarter than this, Mai. Or at least more responsible.” Her father looked weary and lined. 

Mai blinked slowly, unbothered. It was a strange feeling. For so many years she shrunk and silenced herself for her parents wishes and demands. But to break them for a reason she believed in… it was an entirely different thing. 

“I guess you don’t know me that well,” she deadpanned. 

Mother sat down beside Mai, laying her hand on her arm like a confidant. “Mai,” she said softly. “What is there between you and that boy?”

“That boy is a prince. Once he finds the Avatar and is returned to the line of succession, you’ll thank me.” 

The more she said it, the more she suggested that Zuko would find the century-missing Avatar, the more the little spark of hope inside her chest was fanned. General Iroh was right, a person could survive on this. 

That was why she had to give it to Zuko. Hope. She’d wait, even if more part of her than the rest believed it fruitless. 

Her parents shared a significant look that Mai didn’t miss. A disbelief. Not only had they believed Mai smarter and more responsible, but less naive as well. 

Mai raised her chin, uncaring. For the first time in her life she had fought for something. Had made a call that she cared about Zuko’s well being more than the weight of her parent’s disapproval, all the scoldings and leash tightenings and chaperoning that would come with it. 

It was a small defiance, and Mai wasn’t sure she’d ever have an opportunity to feel like this again. 

#

It wasn’t long until the slip of land disappeared over the horizon and they were surrounded by water in every direction. If you don’t better you could almost believe that this -- water, aimless and endless -- was all there is. 

But Zuko knew what he had left behind, what he was looking for, and he knew why. 

Uncle Iroh came to stand beside him at the bow of the ship, headed due south. No looking back no matter how much he wanted to. 

“I’ll admit I don’t know Lady Mai well,” said Uncle Iroh. “But she seems like a nice young lady.” 

“I wouldn’t call her nice,” Zuko said, but he said it fondly. 

“A man has many allies when he is strong and powerful, but one can tell who is a true friend by who sticks around when all the strength and power is gone.” 

“What’re you talking about, Uncle?” 

“Sometimes even I don’t know.” 

Yes, General Iroh thought as he observed his nephew who hadn’t yelled at the crew once since returning from the shore, hope is a powerful thing. 


End file.
